A love triangle threatens to collapse

  

 American indie director Ira Sachs travels to Paris for Passages, a movie about a love triangle. Sachs's story acquires extra spin because the triangle's two men are a gay married couple, one of whom begins a torrid affair with a woman.

   Gender issues aside, Sachs explores issues of ego, trust, and self-deception in ways that make for an engaging drama about a pivotal moment in three lives.

   Franz Rogowski (Undine, Great Freedom) plays Tomas, a film director who’s wrapping a production when the movie begins. Insistent and headstrong, Tomas meets Agathe (Adele Exarchopoulos of Blue is the Warmest Colour) at the company’s wrap party. She's in the process of dumping her current lover.

   When Ben Whishaw’s Martin, Tomas's husband, decides to leave the party early, Tomas takes up with Agathe, perhaps because he’s miffed at Martin or perhaps because his insatiable ego demands a celebratory conquest.

     None of this would make sense, if Tomas weren’t charming and assertive. He quickly establishes intimacy with others but also harbors an ego-driven sense of entitlement about the lives and, let's be frank, the bodies of others.

      When Tomas begins an affair with Agathe, he tells Tomas about it, treating it as no big deal. He explains that he’s reinvigorated and excited. He thinks Martin should understand -- and even be happy about the whole business.

      For her part, Agathe, a teacher by trade, knows about Tomas’s relationship with Martin and seems willing to accept it — up to a point. That point eventually will arrive.

     The screenplay by Sachs, Mauricio Zacharias and Arlette Langmann explores these relationships as they stumble along, overlapping at times. It's difficult to believe that the situation can be sustained.

      Any sympathy we have for Tomas stems from the fact that his audaciousness appears to be uncalculated. He can't help being a jerk and even concocts a fantasy in which he can keep both lovers. When Martin dates a novelist (Erwan Kepoa Fale), Tomas ignores his own philandering and becomes unjustifiably jealous. His gall seems boundless.

      A carefully developed personal drama, Passages revolves around Tomas’s actions but doesn’t shortchange the other characters. 

      I wondered whether the explicitness of the sex scenes was necessary but assumed that Sachs wanted to show that a good deal of the attraction here is sexual. Why pretend otherwise? (The film is unrated.)

      No fair telling how the conflict resolves but Passages entangles us in the lives of its characters and has a feeling of plausibility, perhaps because Sachs allows the story to unfold within a small circle, the kind that can, and sometimes does, lead to the unhappy point where folks become lost.

        Put another way: When a triangle collapses, someone's bound to be hurt.

A fine movie from Italy and two lesser movies as a disappointing summer draws to a close

For the most part, this has been a summer of discontents, to borrow (badly, I suppose) from Shakespeare.

The pleasures we have found at the movies have been mostly on the fringes, so it's probably entirely appropriate that Labor Day weekend, regarded as the conclusion of summer ever since the days when politicians put their white shoes back in the closet for another year, follows suit.

A DIRECTOR GRAPPLES WITH CRISIS ON AND OFF SET

In Mia Madre, Italian actress Margherita Buy plays a woman with plenty on her plate. Her character -- also named Margherita -- is directing a movie, dealing with her aging mother's decline, trying to be a good mother to her teen-age daughter, and seeking a break from her relationship with a needy lover. She's also trying to coax a performance out of an egotistical American actor (a funny John Turturro) who shows up to play the part of a beleaguered factory owner in a movie about labor/management conflict. Director Nanni Moretti appears in the movie as Margherita's brother, a reassuring man who holds together even when others are falling apart. Moretti (Dear Diary, We Have a Pope and The Son) follows Margherita as she rushes between her movie set and the hospital where her once highly competent mother (Giulia Lazzarini) is slipping ever deeper into the fog of dementia. As if all this weren't enough for a single movie, Moretti includes flashbacks, fantasies, and, in what seems to be a case of piling on, a flood that forces Margherita out of her apartment. Perhaps directing a movie and trying to balance an emotionally taxing personal life aren't entirely different enterprises. Both require the ability to function in the midst of apparent chaos and both require belief in the illusion that circumstances can be controlled.

A STRESSED OUT SOLDIER FINDS A CHALLENGING NEW JOB

Director Alice Winocour (Augustine) succeeds mostly in frustrating us with Disorder, a portentous thriller about a traumatized French soldier (Matthias Schoenaerts) who lands a temporary job guarding the family of a Lebanese businessman (Percy Kemp). When the ostentatiously wealthy tycoon leaves on business trip, Schoenaerts' Vincent is left to fight a series of invaders who are connected to a murky, arms-related plot in which the businessman's wife (Diane Kruger) and her young son (Zaid Errougui-Demonsant) are targeted. Sensible behavior (leaving the gated mansion that's under attack, for example) too often gives way to atmospherics as Schoenaerts and Kruger struggle with the screenplay's insistent vagueness. To me, their efforts went for naught. Winocour teases us into involvement without giving Disorder a satisfying enough payoff.

IS HE ACCIDENT PRONE OR IS SOMETHING ELSE AFOOT?

The 9th Life of Louis Drax begins as if it's going to be a seriously intriguing drama about a nine-year-old boy who spends much of the movie in a coma after he falls off a cliff. Rather than an examination of how people cope with tragedy, The 9th Life begins raising doubts about whether Louis (Aiden Longworth) is accident prone or the victim of sustained abuse. As director Alexandre Aja moves through a variety of flashbacks, we meet Louis' angry stepfather (Aaron Paul), a neurologist (Jamie Dornan) who wants to help the boy, and the boy's mother (Sarah Gadon). Dornan's character believes that it's possible to carry on mind-melding communication with people in deep comas. Additional complications arise when Dornan's character, who's married, begins to fall for Gadon's character. Rather than building on its strong premise, Max Minghella's screenplay -- based on a 2004 novel by Liz Jensen -- devolves into a strained and unsatisfying thriller that's intent on leading us down one more muddled path.

Observing life on a small scale

Ira Sachs's winning Little Men chronicles a boyhood friendship in Brooklyn.

Director Ira Sachs (Love is Strange) brings a gentle but knowing touch to Little Men, a story about two boys who become friends in Brooklyn.

That may sound like the basis for an achingly ordinary feel-good story, but Sachs's movie is fueled by issues as diverse as a father's failure to become the actor he hoped to be and a family's struggle with money issues -- not to mention the disruptive consequences of urban gentrification.

At the start of the movie, 13-year-old Jake (Theo Taplitz) moves from Manhattan to Brooklyn with his parents (Greg Kennear and Jennifer Ehle).

Dad's getting a bit long in the tooth for a performer who still works in the kind of small New York productions for which the actors aren't paid. Mom, a psychotherapist, supports the family.

Money being an obvious problem, the family is relieved to move into a Brooklyn apartment that Kenner's character inherits from his recently deceased father.

The apartment sits atop a store that comes with the building. The store is occupied by Leonor (Paulina Garcia of Chile's Gloria), a seamstress who never paid market value for her shop. Jake's aging father evidently welcomed Leonor's company, and adopted a casual attitude toward collecting the rent.

Pressed for money, Jake and his sister (Talia Balsam) believe they're justified in asking for a reasonable rent increase. Leonor thinks otherwise.

Leonor's tough-cookie recalcitrance is further complicated by the fact that Jake and Leonor's son (Michael Barbieri) become fast friends.

An infectiously likable kid who wants to be an actor, Barbieri's Antonio perfectly complements Jake's shyness. The friendship between Jake and Tony gives Sachs an opportunity to celebrate the freedom of city life for a couple of 13-year-olds.

Sachs and co-writer Mauricio Zacharias develop a carefully balanced drama that revels in the delights of boyhood, understands the psychological complexities of the adult relationships and isn't out to slam anyone ever the head.

Credit Sachs with taking us deep into the lives of people whose struggles may not be epic, but never feel anything less than real. In a time of unashamed movie preposterousness and bloat, Sachs's movie reminds us that observing life on a small scale beats not observing it at all.

A couple -- but not under the same roof

New York State now allows gay marriage, but there can be unanticipated consequences -- at least according to Love is Strange, a movie in which John Lithgow and Alfred Molina play a long-established Manhattan couple.

The movie begins when Molina's George and Lithgow's Ben marry after 39 years of living together. Their friends and relatives are overjoyed that the two finally can accomplish what they should long ago have been able to do.

But there's a downside. George works as a music teacher at a Catholic high school that can't abide gay marriage. The school had been willing to overlook George's sexual preferences, but now that he's tied the knot, policy demands that he be dismissed.

This sets up a situation in which the two men face economic pressures that force them to sell their apartment. They come up short on cash, unable to buy (or even rent) another place.

So George and Ben split up for what they hope is a temporary period. George moves in with two gay police officers whose lifestyle runs against his staid grain. His roommates like to party.

Ben takes up residency with a nephew (Darren Burrows) and his wife (Marisa Tomei). He's forced to share a room with the couple's teen-age son (Charlie Tahan), a kid who's none to happy about having a roommate. We feel for Geroge, no one past the age of 60 ever should have to spend a night in a bunk bed.

It seemed to me that on a purely practical level, Ben and George could have found a better solution to their problem. They're offered one living arrangement out of town, but can't abide the thought of leaving New York City.

In pushing the couple apart, director Ira Sachs creates a situation in which the movie's early joy increasingly turns to annoyance.

Ben, in particular, drives Tomei's character a little crazy. She works at home, and has difficulty abiding Ben's constant chatter. Understandably, Ben's teen-age bunkmate would like to have his room back.

Everyone in Love is Strange basically operates out of good will, but cramped living situations can tax anyone's patience.

Molina and Lithgow are entirely believable as a couple that long ago worked out the kinks in their relationship and -- if life were fair -- would be coasting comfortably toward the finish line. George still would be inspiring young people, and Ben would be continuing his career as a painter.

Sachs doesn't drown the story in sentiment, but can't entirely free the narrative of dull spots, as well as a bit of repetition.

Still, George and Ben are genuine enough to keep us interested, as evidenced by the fact that Ben's constant chattering not only taxes the nerves of his nephew's wife, but ours, as well.

In this case, that should be considered a compliment, an attempt to keep the movie from becoming nothing more than a lopsided plea for sympathy.